


In Consideration of Another Point of View

by TropesfromtheBarricade (ShitpostingfromtheBarricade)



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Barriere du Maine, Canon Era, Don't copy to another site, On The Barricade, Other, Salt, one-sided affection, pure satire, text-quotations, the Brick - Freeform, vicky pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 14:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21254741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/TropesfromtheBarricade
Summary: I came across a piece of insight recently that made me reconsider my interpretations of these characters; in light of the revelation, I have decided to give some consideration to the comment.25.10.20 edit:Nearly a year has passed since I first uploaded this, so I think it's about time that I explain myself.I will neither name people nor link the interaction, but an incident had occurred in the comments of a friend's fic wherein someone went out of their way to be rather indignant about what she had written in an appropriately tagged fic, and when others addressed the comment and suggested that this was not the place to soapbox they buckled down.  This was written in response.To be clear: I take no issue with people who do not ship ExR.  This was written for an audience of one with many direct quotes from what they had said, in the comments of an ExR fic which they had gone out of their way to seek out.  Was it a mature response?  Perhaps not, but it brought humor to a deeply upset friend, and as such I can't bring myself to regret it.





	1. Enjolras and his Lieutenants

**Author's Note:**

> I came across a piece of insight recently that made me reconsider my interpretations of these characters; in light of the revelation, I have decided to give some consideration to the comment.
> 
> **25.10.20 edit:** Nearly a year has passed since I first uploaded this, so I think it's about time that I explain myself.
> 
> I will neither name people nor link the interaction, but an incident had occurred in the comments of a friend's fic wherein someone went out of their way to be rather indignant about what she had written in an appropriately tagged fic, and when others addressed the comment and suggested that this was not the place to soapbox they buckled down. This was written in response.
> 
> To be clear: I take no issue with people who do not ship ExR. This was written for an audience of one with many direct quotes from what they had said, in the comments of an ExR fic which they had gone out of their way to seek out. Was it a mature response? Perhaps not, but it brought humor to a deeply upset friend, and as such I can't bring myself to regret it.

As the angelic and radiant Enjolras strode purposefully towards that rendezvous—that is to say, towards the Courgourde of Aix—he reviewed the whole situation in his own mind. The gravity of events was obvious. When facts, the premonitory of latent social ill, are moving heavily along, the slightest complication stops and shackles them. A phenomenon that brings on collapses and rebirths. Angelic Enjolras caught glimpses of a luminous uprising under the dark skirts of the future. Who knows? Perhaps the moment was approaching. The people seizing their rights again, and what a glorious spectacle! (almost as glorious as Enjolras himself) The revolution majestically resuming possession of France and saying to the world: Tomorrow! Enjolras was pleased. The furnace was heating up. At that very instant, he had a powder train of friends spread across Paris. He was inwardly composing with the philosophical and penetrating eloquence of Combeferre, the cosmopolitan enthusiasm, of Feuilly, Courfeyrac's animation, Bahorel's laughter, Jean Prouvaire's melancholy, Joly's science, and Bossuet's sarcasms, a sort of electric spark to catch fire in all directions at once. All of them put to work. Surely, the result would answer the effort. This led him to think of Grantaire.

"Well now," he said to himself, a positive and most gracious attitude upon him, as that does seem to be the permanent state of the man, except when he’s feeling particularly revolutionary and like he must kill a man in cold blood, "the Barriere du Maine isn’t far out of my way. Suppose I go as far as Richefeu's? Let’s take a little look at what our lost sheep Grantaire is doing, how he’s coming along."

We invite the reader to reflect on the fact that we can reasonably predict, with fair accuracy, exactly what that scoundrel, that beast among men, that cynical drunkard and fiend, is doing at this time.

One o'clock was striking from the Vaugirard steeple when Enjolras, in a glorious beam of light and justice (but not spectacle, for our fearless leader is too Spartan for that), reached the Richefeu smoking-room.

He pushed open the door, entered, folded his ripplingly muscled arms, letting the door fall to and strike his broad manly passionate shoulders, set in righteous indignation, and gazed revolutionarily at that room filled with tables, men, and smoke, so beneathe his calibre and yet his self-appointed place, Jesus cleansing the feet of his followers.

A voice broke forth from the mist of smoke, interrupted by another voice. It was that demon Grantaire holding a salacious, argumentative dialogue with an adversary and very clearly, obviously, painstakingly implied not to be spreading the good word of The Revolution.

The Devil’s good servant Grantaire, with his witty and quite clever tongue, capable of distracting even the most principled of potential followers from the path of righteousness, a modern snake in this tainted Garden of Eden, was sitting opposite another figure, at a marble Saint-Anne table, strewn with grains of bran and dotted with dominos. He was hammering the table with his coarse and violent fist of evil temptation, and this is what that virtuous and pious Enjolras who has never done any wrong in his golden and tragically virgin life <s>(CALL ME)</s> heard:--

"Double-six."

"Fours."

"The pig! I have no more."

"You are dead. A two."

"Six."

"Three."

"One."

"It's my move."

"Four points."

"Not much."

"It's your turn."

"I have made an enormous mistake."

"You are doing well."

"Fifteen."

"Seven more."

"That makes me...twenty-two!"

"You weren't expecting that double-six. If I had placed it at the beginning, the whole play would have been changed."

"A two again."

"One."

"One! Well, five."

"I haven't any."

"It was your play, I believe?"

"Yes."

"Blank."

"What luck he has! Ah! You are lucky! ...Two."

"One."

"Neither five nor one. That's bad for you."

"Domino."

"Plague take it!"

Enjolras wept.

(on the inside, because angel tears are too much for mortals to bear)


	2. Night Begins to Gather Over Grantaire

But Grantaire, that beast of beasts, peak cruelty and evil in gross flesh and mortal form, attained to the highest regions of dithryamb. Matelote had mounted to the first floor once more, Grantaire seized this innocent and vestal creature round her waist, and gave vent to long bursts of pealing laughter at the window which curdled the dairy of the common folk and made children weep in their beds.

"Matelote is homely!" he cried: "Matelote is of a dream of ugliness! Matelote is a chimaera. This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian's mistress, and she is a good girl. I guarantee that she will fight well. Every good girl contains a hero. As for Mother Hucheloup, she's an old warrior. Look at her moustaches! She inherited them from her husband. A hussar indeed! She will fight too. These two alone will strike terror to the heart of the banlieue. Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as there are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid and formic acid; however, that is a matter of perfect indifference to me. Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I understand only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good fellow. Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had been rich, there would have been no more poor people! You would have seen! Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses, how much better things would go! I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild's fortune! How much good he would do! Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and timid! You have cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover."

"Hold your tongue, you cask!" pleaded Courfeyrac, clutching his ears against the slew of profanity tainting the honor of the barricade.

Grantaire, the wretch (honestly, he’s not even good-looking, I don’t know why people like to ship him with the likes of the incredible and angelic Apollo, a real-life nonfictional seraphim), retorted:--

"I am the capitoul and the master of the floral games!"

(You’re not though, you’re just looking for another opportunity to make yourself sound smart, which you’re not even that smart tbh)

(Enjolras doesn’t care about your puns, he cares about things that matter, like The People and Justice and Freedom and Equity and his friends and not even looking good, he’s just naturally a statue-esque Adonis with a halo of flowing golden locks, _you don’t deserve him and none of us ever will)_

Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade with aforementioned radiant locks shining behind him in the romantic candlelight of the scene, gun in hand, raised his beautiful, austere face. Enjolras, as the reader knows, had something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition (translation for the Grantaires out there: he was Hot). He would have perished at Thermopylae with Leonidas, burned at Drogheda with Cromwell, withered to dust in modernday high school’s disgusting immaturity and worldliness.

"Grantaire," he shouted in his sexy baritone, golden hair shimmering behind him, "I see that you are intoxicated. Please, for your own safety, remove yourself from this barricade. This is the place for enthusiasm, not for drunkenness. Don't disgrace the barricade with your lack of concern for your own wellbeing!"

This totally not-angry speech, because that’s just not who Enjolras is, produced a singular effect on Grantaire. One would have said that he had had a glass of cold water flung in his face. He seemed to be rendered suddenly sober for the first time ever—but the devil is an ever-persuasive illusionist.

He sat down, a caricature of angelic purity beside Enjolras’ undiluted radiance, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked at Enjolras with indescribable yet false gentleness that belied his true intent, and said to the leader for whom he was not worthy:--

"Let me sleep here."

"Go and sleep somewhere else," suggested Enjolras.

But Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes-routine fixed on the tender and forgiving embodiment of passion and revolutionary fervor, replied:--

"Let me sleep here,--until I die."

Enjolras regarded him with piercing eyes, as if seeing the incubus’ true form for the first time:--

"Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying."

Grantaire replied in a grave tone:--

"You will see."

He stammered a few more unintelligible words like the drunkard he is, then his head fell heavily on the table, and, as is the usual effect of the second period of inebriety, into which the generous and forgiving Enjolras had roughly and abruptly thrust him, an instant later he had fallen asleep.


	3. A Final Remark

"Oh Enjolras," cried that wicked goat of a man who is called Grantaire, "is there nothing I could do to redeem myself in your eyes?"

My dear reader, were Enjolras any less of a man, in control or kindness or grace or sheer intellect or glory or austerity or godliness, he would have answered quite simply "No." But as the reader does know, our leader in red is much more than the petty temperament of mortality, risen as he is above the planes of humanity and into the heavens.

"You could die by my side for our cause--hand in hand, as a brother." And no more, because Enjolras can do _way_ better than that sorry sack of bones and liquor, held together by naught but a will to do ill.

"And if we are to meet a happy end? What then?"

A peculiar question, one that even the most idealistic of hearts had not dared to consider. "Why then, I suppose you would have to find some equally or more or less spectacular way of declaring your allegiance."

"All right then. So like...got any suggestions?"

That delicate cherub's brow furrowed--and one thousand curses to any creature that dare wrinkle such a fragile feature! 

"Nope."

"Cool. Guess I'll catch you and some bullets in the Corinthe in a couple of hours."

**Author's Note:**

> Ecce: the Enjolras and Grantaire that Vicky wanted.
> 
> Thanks to [Giovanni Gasparro](http://www.giovannigasparro.com/en/) for the [fanart](http://www.giovannigasparro.com/sp.php?p=966)!!


End file.
